The Tegra Note is a 7-inch Tegra 4 based tablet, built by a contract manufacturer for NVIDIA. The tablet will be offered by NVIDIA but not directly. Instead, you'll be able to buy co-branded versions of the Tegra Note through some of NVIDIA's traditional partners like EVGA, Zotac and PNY. If this sounds like how you presently buy NVIDIA graphics cards, you'd be right. The difference, at least initially, is that there's effectively no partner level customization offered on the Tegra Note. I get the impression that if successful, future versions may allow some flexibility on behalf of NVIDIA's partners, but not today.

The Tegra Note features a 1280 x 800 display, 1GB of memory and of course a 1.8GHz quad-core Tegra 4 SoC. There's 16GB of NAND on-board, with a microSD card slot for expansion. NVIDIA promises to ship Tegra Note with the latest version of Android, and promises to provide OTA updates directly to customers.

The tablet falls somewhere in between the 2012 and 2013 Nexus 7s in terms of size and weight. The Note comes from the inclusion of NVIDIA's DirectStylus - a passive stylus technology that NV demonstrated a while ago as a way of bringing stylus support to lower cost platforms. NVIDIA is promising up to 10 hours of video playback. No word on what the WiFi hardware inside the Tegra Note looks like. Update: It seems to be 2.4GHz 802.11n.

NVIDIA Tegra Note

SoC

1.8GHz NVIDIA Tegra 4

Display

7-inch IPS LCD 1280 x 800

RAM

1GB

WiFi

2.4GHz 802.11n

Storage

16GB + microSD (up to 32GB)

I/O

Micro HDMI connector

OS

"Latest" Android OS with OTA updates from NVIDIA directly

Battery

4100 mAh (15 Wh?)

Size / Mass

199 x 119 x 9.6 mm, 320g

Camera

5MP Rear Facing Camera
VGA Front Facing Camera

Price

$199

The tablet will retail for around $199 and will begin shipping in the next few months. If the rest of the package is well executed, this could be a very affordable way to get a very high performing 7-inch Android tablet.

Seems like it's priced a bit too high to compete with the Nexus 7 but I guess street price could be lower (are we gonna start seeing rebates left and right like for GPUs?) and the micro SD slot will draw some in... Frankly I think removable storage media is less of an issue on tablets (just use USB OTG or that micro USB / micro SD OTG reader from minova), but there's still some usage cases where anything dangling is a no no (like if you're giving it to a child).

The more interesting element here is why NV is doing this at all... Are they that desperate to get Tegra 4 out there? Will their partners really wanna compete with the likes of Samsung?Reply

Ugh, I know from a marketing standpoint Samsung wins, but I wouldn't touch one of their gooped up tablets with a 10 foot pole. I wouldn't touch their best one for $75.

Nvidia I have some faith in actually providing updates, and of course if this is real Tegra 4, it's awesome hardware (not sure, as I'd thought before to hit that price point they were using the "Tegra 4" that actually had A9s, though I'd still take that any day over a Samsung tablet).Reply

I agree with you on all counts, the only problem is the Nexus 7 is stiff competition. Maybe they should've done a 1920x1200 10" model at $350-400 instead, maybe even 1280x @ $300? Most large tablets are still pretty overpriced, are smaller ones selling better becausepeople want smaller or simply cause they're significantly cheaper (I actually went from 10" to 7" by choice but I dunno anyone else that has).Reply

++Impulses. All signs are that T4(/Cortex A15) is just silly fast; that speed at that price is great, and not having the s/w actively botched by Samsung is a bonus. On the other hand, the N7 screen and so on are pretty spiff and it doesn't cost much more. So.Reply

it's not about the resolution it's about the ppi you dumbf.ack. you just dont get this. 1080p 1080p 1080p blah blah well you know what? 1080 requires 2 times the graphics power as a 720p screen. it's much more useful to spare that processing power for battery life and higher fps' on games. Reply

My thinking is they did that because that SOC can only run the way they want at that resolution. A higher resolution would require a more powerful SOC which they haven't released yet. Also has the added benefit of reducing cost and raising profit margin.

At some point they made the decision they wanted to get a product out in a specific time. They committed to it. So from there it's just a matter of doing it. This product isn't meant to be a flagship tablet. It's not meant to make people go "wow, I'm buying only Nvidia from now on". It's just a safe entry into a new and wildly sporadic market. They're just establishing a presence as safely as possible.

My guess, they're going to release that "wow" product based on their first "real" mobile GPU. Which I forget the name of right now, but anandtech talked about it in one of those articles about the Shield. Reply